Pansies from Wilton's Course 2

One of the only gum paste flowers to be covered in Wilton's Course 2: Flowers and Cake Design is the pansy (the other one is the Play-Doh-esque Button Flower). If you've never played around with gum paste, the pansy is a good candidate because 1) the supply list is relatively short, and 2) the end result actually almost looks like a flower found in nature. You'll need at least two colors of gum paste (one should be yellow, for the center) which should be stored under plastic cups to keep them from drying out while you're working with them, Crisco (to knead into the gum paste if it's drying out), a container of gum glue adhesive (a pinch of gum paste dissolved in a tablespoon of water), a small brush, a dusting pouch filled with a 50/50 mix of powdered sugar and cornstarch, a pansy cutter (any 5-petal cutter will do), the knife and ball tools from Wilton's 10-piece Fondant and Gum Paste Tool Set, a 3" flower forming cup for each pansy, a gum paste storage board (use the back side for your work surface), and a 9" fondant roller. You'll also need thick and thin pink shaping foam. You might also want Color Dust (in particular, Purple) to add detail to the petals. 

 Start by dusting the back side of the storage board.

 Roll out some gum paste; it should be paper-thin. You might find you need to regularly dust it to keep it from sticking to the roller.

 Cut out two flower shapes for each pansy. Store one of them under one of the storage board's clear plastic sheets.

 Place the other cutout on the thin pink foam.

 Run the large end of the ball tool around each of the petals to thin and slightly ruffle them. The ball should be more on the foam than on the petal.

 Move the cutout to the thick pink foam, and cup each petal with the large end of the ball tool; press down in the center of the petal, then slide the tool toward the center, decreasing pressure as you go.

 Place this cutout in a flower forming cup. Remove the other cutout from storage. Use the knife tool to cut off two adjacent petals. The remaining three can go back under the plastic cup.

 Use the knife tool to cut the two petals apart:

 Use the ball tool in the same way on these petals to thin, ruffle, and cup them.

 Use the brush to dab a small amount of gum glue to the underside of each of the two petals…

 …and attach them like this. They should be slightly fanned out from each other, and not stacked directly on top of the petals beneath them, to add depth.

 To finish the pansies, attach a small loop of yellow gum paste with a dab of gum glue. I found I had the best luck forming this loop by rolling a tiny log of gum paste between a fingertip and the palm of the opposite hand. Carefully pinch a loop less than half an inch in length, and stick the tip of it right between where the two single petals' tips meet.

 If you want to add color to the pansy, apply Color Dust with a narrow angled brush, emanating from the center in short strokes first…

 …and then add the loop.

 Think of all the colors pansies come in; you could make these out of almost any shade of gum paste! If you're especially fond of pansies, take a look at the ones made from royal icing (one of my favorites to pipe).

Basketweave Using Magic Tip #2B

Today I learned how to do the basketweave on a cake for the final project in Wilton Course 2: Flowers and Cake Design. Basketweave can be done with a variety of tips, including star, flat, serrated, or a combination of 2 (one piping vertical lines, one piping horizontal). Based on the sheer size of my cake, I decided to work with a rather large tip, the #2B by Magic Tip, which is a good half inch wide. On one side it's flat: 

And on the other it's serrated. This is the texture I used, so this is the side that was facing away from the cake the whole time I was piping. 

Start by icing a cake and chilling it. It does not necessarily need to be the same color as your basketweave icing. This one is a 13 by 9 oval, made of three alternating vanilla and chocolate layers that took one box mix each to make:

Start by marking vertical lines all the way around the cake. For a cake of this size, I used a large straight spatula as a guide. 

 I traced a guide line in the icing along the spatula's edge with a second, smaller spatula. The lines are one large spatula's width apart.

 Start by loading a large pastry bag with whichever tip you'd like and medium consistency icing. You can either pipe from the top to the bottom or from the bottom to the top (the latter seemed to be the favorite method of most of the folks in the class, including myself):

 I apologize for any piping you see to the left of this vertical line; I hope it won't distract you. I felt like I needed to get a few inches of practice in before I started to take photos. It is OK for the vertical lines to overlap onto the surface of the cake; they'll be covered with borders, flowers, etc. eventually. Begin by piping a horizontal line from one guide line to another; this will form a "T" with your vertical line:

 This short line is known as a "spacer dot." It is piped on the guide line directly below where the top right edge of the "T" ends:

 Repeat these two steps; the horizontal line…

 And the spacer dot. This, by the way, is definitely best practiced on a sheet of parchment or waxed paper before it's attempted on a cake.

 On this cake there was room for one more horizontal line at the base. Notice how the guide line is still barely visible under the spacer dots and right edges of horizontal lines?

 Pipe a vertical line from the base to the top of the cake and finish off that line:

 You will be repeating and reversing this process all the way around the cake. I promise, your speed will improve in no time. I would have finished this cake in well under an hour if I hadn't spent so much time chatting with everyone in the class! So, at the top of the next guide line, pipe a spacer dot:

 Beneath it, tuck the tip into that hole in the icing (that my instructor refers to appropriately as a "window") and pipe a horizontal line from the window over to the guide line, ending below the spacer dot.

 Pipe another spacer dot beneath this horizontal line on the guide line…

  …another horizontal line…

…and a final spacer dot beneath it:

 Pipe a vertical line over all these ends along the guideline, and by now you should be able to see the basketweave take shape:

 When you get to the end (which will undoubtedly become the "back of the cake" where various seams wind up), here is how to finish it off.

Pipe a vertical line over the spacer dots and ends of vertical lines:

 On the left, pipe a short horizontal line that goes from the "window" to the right edge of that vertical line:

 In the next "window" down on the right, pipe a very short horizontal line:

 Repeat the horizontal line that goes from the next "window" down to the vertical line's right edge:

 Pipe another very short line in the next "window" down to the right of the horizontal line:

 And finish with a final horizontal line from the "window" to the right edge of the vertical line:

 As you can probably tell, this cake is a work in progress; more to come soon!